by Barry Lancet
The budding smile vanished. “That can wait until we’re in the same room with her.”
“Give me something.”
He took my measure with a sideways glance. “Let’s just say her communication style tripped some alarms.”
CHAPTER 18
NAOMI had been setting off alarms in Japan for a while now, but I never imagined her activities would lead to a confrontation in Washington.
About a year ago, a good four years after the tragic earthquake and tsunami, she had called me for a favor.
The disaster had been cataclysmic on multiple levels. A colossal quake registering a bone-rattling 9.0 on the Richter scale was followed by a devastating wall of water. Along the northeastern coast of Japan, giant waves thirty-five to fifty feet high rolled over a handful of breakwaters as easily as a sixteen-wheeler semi over a twig. One after another, the massive tsunamis smothered shorelines for two hundred miles. And in places where the land was flat, the water swarmed as far as six miles inland.
Only those people who reached high ground survived.
The invading swells swamped dozens of towns and villages and wiped out more than three hundred fishing ports. At the first stage, the ocean surge turned to kindling nearly every house, school, office building, and apartment block in its path, then in retreat dragged the bodies of its victims out to sea and a watery grave.
Next, before anyone could find time to mourn the dead, the third leg of the disaster struck: the Fukushima nuclear power plant began to come apart.
Cracks in the pipes.
Leaking coolant.
Escaping radiation.
Explosions.
* * *
I’d been at my antiques shop on Lombard Street with my daughter when Naomi called. There were no customers, so Jenny and I were playing hide-and-seek in the “safe” area of my cavernous store filled with Japanese traditional wooden chests, display cases of Asian artifacts, and an endless maze of classic lacquer ware, ceramics, hanging scrolls, and more. My daughter knew to be cautious, and not to touch anything.
When the phone rang, I was pretending not to know she was hiding behind the eighteenth-century Japanese stairway chest.
“Time out,” I called. “I have to take this call.”
“Okay,” she said from her hiding place, immediately giving away her location. Then: “Oops.”
I chuckled and said hello into the receiver.
“Hello, Brodie-san. It’s Naomi Nobuki. Can you talk?”
“Sure. How are you? Are you in Tokyo or are you out in Fukushima?”
“I go back and forth. I’m still reporting on the nuclear plant disaster every chance I get. And gathering information.”
The last comment gave me pause. “You’re a brave lady.”
“I need your help, Brodie.”
“For what?”
“For gaiatsu. When the time comes.”
“Of course. But how?”
Gaiatsu translates as “outside pressure.” To crack open the closed world that often defines certain segments of Japanese society, reformers try to leverage overseas assets—an outside “voice,” usually coupled with foreign media or a foreign institution of some renown.
“I’m working that out now,” Naomi said. “But I wanted to ask your permission in advance. I’m angry, Brodie-san. So angry.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I’m a reporter, but it’s become personal. Too many people have been permanently displaced. There are reports of radiation exposure and sickness among the children. The bureaucrats and the utility people have done so little about any of it. They are taking us all for idiots. Dad is also disgusted. He suggested I contact you.”
“Fine by me. Just call when you’re ready.”
“I will, once I get a handle on the direction. Right now I am focused on the meltdown and the fact that there was no backup plan should all the emergency power systems fail.”
Which is exactly what happened.
Neither the utility in charge of the nuclear power plant nor Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had made contingency plans.
“It was incompetence on a criminal scale,” Naomi said.
My industrious friend was referring to the decision to put the main backup power system for the plant in a basement without bothering to waterproof the room. The tsunami rendered the system useless in seconds. Which meant that vital coolant couldn’t be pumped into the reactors. Which caused them to heat up beyond control. Meltdown and extensive radiation leakage followed. The end result was the spread of radiation that nearly reached Tokyo and beyond, and in the end caused the permanent evacuation of more than 160,000 people. They lost their land, their homes, their way of life.
“Isn’t the utility claiming that they couldn’t possibly have known that such a big quake and tsunami could hit Japan? This in the land of tremors and tsunamis?”
“Yes. Corruption, of course. They are covering themselves by saying there wasn’t enough accurate information, even though according to experts outside Japan who cannot be influenced, there was overwhelming evidence.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, Naomi. But if you follow your conscience, you’ll get a good night’s sleep.”
I heard a small gasp at the other end of the line. “How’d you know?”
“It’s in your voice,” I said. I found myself biting my lip before adding, “If you choose to move against Big Energy, be careful. They and their cronies aren’t called the ‘nuclear mafia’ for nothing.”
And here we were more than five years after the calamity, her brother dead, her father shot, and Naomi in hiding, with three of the most powerful US agencies about to knock her door down.
CHAPTER 19
WHAT had Naomi done to bring out the FBI, CIA, and DHS?
We eased up to the front of the Willard, a stately hotel perched on a street corner a block from the White House grounds.
A uniformed porter opened the car door.
“We going in the front?” I asked in some surprise.
“Why not?” Kastor said. “We’re practically neighbors.”
A reference to the FBI’s center of operations a mere five blocks away.
“You been here before?” Kastor asked.
“Once for drinks.”
As had countless world leaders and VIPs before us, we strolled up the red carpet leading to the entrance. The Willard was one of the capital’s legendary lodgings and meeting places. Aside from seeing nearly every president grace its halls since the mid-1800s, its gilded and colonnaded lobby was said to be the birthplace of the word lobbyist.
Outside, I spotted no additional watchers, but inside, they had taken up discreet observation posts. True to form, the foyer swarmed with lobbyists huddled in sequestered alcoves. Their aides hovered either over their shoulders or in secondary positions farther removed but still within sight, urgently working their phones.
Despite the crowd, I was able to pick out three additional agents. A suited woman stood unobtrusively at the bellhop’s station off to the right, with a newspaper in hand as if waiting for her luggage. A second, in casual clothing, was stationed alongside the front counter to the left, trying to blend in with the clientele. A third sat on a bench near the elevators, leafing through a newsmagazine.
“Your people?” I asked Kastor, nodding toward one of the watchdogs.
The FBI man frowned and said nothing.
All six of the airport contingent boarded the elevator in my wake, then trod the plush hall to Naomi’s door, where Swelley knocked and said they had me in tow.
Tom Stockton called out from behind two inches of solid oak. “Brodie?”
“Here, and still vertical,” I said.
The door swung open.
* * *
Under the hostile stares of a roomful of federal agents, Tom Stockton and I shook hands. He had a pale complexion and hair the color of mahogany. He was tall, slim, and as accurate with a gun as he was fast, which is why I’d specifically asked for him to
guard Naomi.
My friend’s daughter exhibited speed of another order. Without hesitation she approached me with a question in Japanese, “Are any of these gentlemen responsible for what happened to my father and brother?”
Naomi occupied a richly appointed room spilling over with majestic dark-wood furnishings and splashes of old-world royal red throughout: red pillows, red lampshades, and swatches of red in the carpet. It also spilled over with alphabet boys, and a scattering of their female counterparts. The agencies matched one another body for body. Attendance had risen to four people per outfit. Two on each end of the operation, exclusive of those lingering in the lobby. An alarming number.
Swelley stepped forward. “Ms. Nobuki. You’ll address your comments to us, not Mr. Brodie. Do you understand?”
He pointed a finger at a woman with straight auburn hair and tortoiseshell glasses, who translated the demand.
Naomi blinked rapidly, surprised at the gruffness of the senior DHS agent’s words. “Yes, but—”
Swelley cut her off. “After we’ve finished, if your answers are acceptable, we’ll consider questions.”
He motioned to a protégé, who stuffed a file into his outstretched hand. Extracting a clipped sheaf of papers, he turned it around so Naomi could read the top sheet, saying, “Did you write this?”
The interpreter immediately repeated the question in a cadence that echoed Swelley’s severity.
The document had what looked like five lines of text on it, photocopied and enlarged and shaded in places. Naomi read the material with studied determination, her lips moving faintly, and said yes when she’d finished.
“And this?”
She looked at a second page. “Yes, that’s mine.”
“This?”
A third sheet. Her lips traced the words.
“This was a return message.”
“These are why we’ve detained you, Ms. Nobuki. Pretty damning. Who is TK?”
“Toshio Kawaguchi, a Japanese-American man living in Los Angeles.”
I scowled. “Let me see those.”
Swelley had angled the documents away from me so that I couldn’t read them.
He said, “They’re classified.”
“How about I classify you upside the head?”
For the briefest instant, his eyes flared with unbridled contempt. Then they grew dismissive and he turned away. Kastor cleared his throat. Swelley flashed the FBI man a look of disgust, then thrust the papers at me.
I shuffled through them quickly. Each sheet contained a short email message. Across the upper edge of the pages ran a continuous refrain of TOP SECRET. Underneath was a line of coded gibberish.
I read the first one.
ECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP S
eck2ap59,s**qc83a40f naowppp20sbfper92[anbit[**sao1-94ns-4sa;udd
Dear NRC,
Please my last week email about nuclear explosion in Japan and America respond.
Sincerely,
Naomi Nobuki
Then the next two.
OP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—T
k294*$sad wp&@fu&-sob toshen eoth!#aos shoq wotoxqqp-45624$^^a
TK,
Answer not come from NRC about nuke problem.
NN
RET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET—TOP SEC
Ppp3918^^doensa;302bgosown%%#skeua;aksbt =!!!!)!)4akooquanbe;e
NN,
This is not surprising. The American govt is always secretive about its nuclear program.
Yours,
TK
Naomi’s independent streak had surfaced. She’d tried to enlist the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to her cause. Or at least bring them into the loop. This was an attempt at gaiatsu—outside pressure—of the highest order. To be waved in the face of the authorities back home, if she could catch the NRC’s eye.
But she’d approached them on her own. And in a clumsy manner, without an introduction or someone more versed in English to clarify her intent. I admired her tenacity. It was how I handled most things. But nuclear power issues were political hot potatoes. Perhaps she thought her status in her home territory would be enough of an entry ticket. It wasn’t. Her lone outreach had raised red flags, and her awkward English phrasing raised them higher.
I glanced at Naomi and drank in her open expression and trusting eyes. Her cute button nose. Clearly, she was anyone’s definition of devious.
“Did the NRC reply?” I asked my journalist friend.
“No. I started with phone calls but my calls were never returned so I tried email.”
I faced Swelley. “Ms. Nobuki’s attached her name to these. She’s hardly hiding.”
“It triggered a midlevel security alert,” he snapped back.
“After which you did your due diligence, right?”
“How we proceed is classified.”
“Let me tell you, then. You didn’t. I’d bet good money you didn’t even make the effort because this low-hanging fruit was too tempting. But guess what? What you have in these emails is standard English usage in Japan. Grammatically incorrect but typical of their speech patterns. The level is remedial and doesn’t mean the writer can actually speak English. At this level, most times they can’t. Your analysts should know this, or would have dug it out if someone had bothered to put them on it.”
In our post-9/11 world, hunting for a disaster-in-the-making was fine and as it should be, but Naomi wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t a threat. In calling out the troops, Swelley had done the country a disservice, if anything. Wasting major resources on a minor lead. He should have checked up on the person behind the potential threat first. He hadn’t—and Naomi had nuked him with bad grammar.
I said, “Did any of you check on Ms. Nobuki before you charged over here?” I looked around.
In a monotone, Kastor said, “We let our Homeland colleagues run with it.”
But his FBI superiors still wanted a piece of the action. Maybe that was the problem. There had been a stampede to corral a potential culprit and collect the credit.
I inhaled deeply and breathed out slowly. Steady, Brodie.
I said, “Ms. Nobuki has a lengthy track record of antinuclear-power activity after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. That is nuclear as in nuclear power plant, not nuke, the bomb.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Swelley said.
I shook my head, annoyed. “But you should. There are dozens of her articles online. Plus video clips of her work as a news anchor. She’s a public figure. A newscaster and reporter. She’s not running below the radar.”
“All her work is in Japanese.”
“Because that’s the language she speaks. The only language she speaks.”
Swelley remained intractable. “It’s another kind of cover, isn’t it? We thought a preemptive strike while she was in our bailiwick was in order.”
“You nailed her. Hiding out at the Willard.”
“A hundred and fifty yards from the White House.”
“A hundred and fifty yards of ferroconcrete hotel, shopping mall, and office space.”
Swelley stared at me for a long moment, then nodded at his minions, who trailed out after him into the hall for a huddle, the last of the group dragging the door closed.
In the room, we all waited in silence. Kastor tipped his chair back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Five minutes later Homeland Security returned, Swelley reading something on his cell phone screen. “We wait for Tokyo,” he said. “They should be calling in shortly.”
“Better this century than next,” I said. Then in Japanese to Naomi: “We need to get some protection for your family in Japan, too. Immediately.”
Ken and his wife had three children: Toru, Naomi, and Akihiro. Toru had died in Napa. With Naomi safely under our watch that left three family members unattended—Ken’s wife, grandson, and his other son, Akihiro.
“Oh, yes. Please. Dad w
ould want that.”
I pulled out my phone and began a text message in Japanese to Kunio Noda, the chief detective at Brodie Security and my best man in Tokyo.
Larger looked at his boss. “What’s he doing?”
“Naomi’s family is under siege,” I said. “I’m getting them protection.”
“We can’t have that,” Swelley said.
Larger moved forward, eyes set on confiscating my phone and inflicting damage in the process.
I rose and faced the Homeland hothead, terse words directed at his controller. “Give me one good reason why an American citizen can’t handle private business not related to national security in your presence. Another inch and I’m going at it again with your pet.”
Kastor’s glance rolled lazily in Swelley’s direction. “Well?”
“Well what?” the DHS man said.
“Do you have an answer for Brodie?”
“I don’t answer to him.”
“I’d like to hear it, though. For the record.”
A dark shadow passed over Swelley’s face. “Make it short.”
CHAPTER 20
WHILE I was messaging Tokyo, Naomi excused herself to freshen up, which meant restoring both her makeup and her composure. By the time I finished, she had yet to return so I let my curiosity off its leash.
I said to one of the two CIA agents who’d followed from the airport, “Worked with a guy called Luke a little while back.”
Luke had appeared quite mysteriously during the Japantown case when I’d asked a Japanese shadow powerbroker to help muster some additional manpower in the States. Luke had arrived, lent a hand, then disappeared as inexplicably as he had appeared.
My comment elicited a pair of cryptic smiles. “The agency’s a big place. A lot of people work there.”
“Thousands,” the second guy said. “The exact number’s classified.”
I nodded. “That’s all right. Most of them are probably in this room.”
The first guy said, “This Luke have a last name?”
“He never said.”
The two men exchanged a glance.